"With excellent positioning, branding and marketing, it’s fairly easy to get people to buy something once. But the No. 1 reason consumers will buy a food or drink again and again and again is taste.

We call it repeat purchase. And we hear this in every piece of consumer research we do. In every category. The fact is, it’s really hard to build a successful business without repeat purchase. Which means if your product doesn’t taste great, it’s not going to succeed.

Consumer taste-test results were suspiciously absent throughout the rest of the show. Why? It’s my opinion (as a professional food developer) that many of the products launched at the show wouldn’t have passed a consumer taste test.

Would people buy them? Yes, if they're cleverly branded, beautifully packaged and perfectly positioned. But would they buy a second time? Probably not."